QuickTime tips

by Keith Mitchell of Apple Computer
– not an engineer, just going over practical stuff that he uses day in and day out, compression of video

clearpano.com
Pangea VR – http://www.pangeasoft.net/pano/plugin/
chicnavigator
clickheredesign.com

He manages digital content on the Apple Learning Interchange

Digital Learning Events are most popular place
– ALI gives free bandwidth and host webpages
– helps people learn how to do webcasting with 12″

New for QT7
– from right in QT, you can record: autosenses video source
– it decides codec, size, etc

some teachers are sending home videos from school
– parents seeing what kids did in class, on field trip, etc.

For audio recording, for feedback reasons the monitor volume defaults to zero

Tool that will let you bring in photos to iMovie with small text
– simple tools with Quicktime player

it is hard to find tools that require you to spend learning curve or money

copy a picture from quicktime, then choose EDIT – ADD SELECTION & SCALE

When choosing export, choose Movie to Quicktime Movie
– not to MPEG-4 unless you want to play it from Windows Media Player
– using MPEG-4 15 fps good
– H.264 is brand new codec, can use 29 fps

New DVDs coming out will be using H.264
– by fall ALI will be using J.264, still using MPEG-4 now

Restrict data rate, think of cable modem (aboug 350-400 kbits/sec)
– ALI usually restricts to 300 kbits/sec
– size, usually custom 320 x 240
– under filter, choose brightness/contrast, increase contrast to about 20 to make your video look sharper
– for sounds, AAC is the MPEG-4 compressor

Keith just published his first podcast on Sunday

Can extract audio track quickly
– get movie properties, click on sound track, then click extract

Can use the “i” and “o” keys to select in and out points in Final Cut

Program called “Videocue”
– can get this for free as an ADE
– has a teleprompter with media

Look in 3rd party opportunities, Video Cue
– sole purpose is to produce archived video
– can get wirecast at a discount, about 50%
– little company in England

Can use Wirecast on one machine and iChat AV running on another computer, RGB signal coming out of 2nd computer with iChat lets a guest speaker come in to live webcast
in wirecast, duplicate a shot and then double click it
– can assign the shot, show 2 images in 1
– built in chroma-keying
– because of dissolving, titling, etc, this looks like TV / broadcast quality

enter IP of your server, can do auto-announce with name and password

Setting up an rtsp sreaming server, once it is setup this is pretty easy

Figuring out how many people you can support for a live event is another issue
– you can bring in a consulting engineer, may need more than 1 server
– Keith sends to 1 server and it multicasts to 2000 different servers on Akama network

Can do webcast with free QT broadcaster
– up until this year at ALI they have used QT broadcaster, now they are using Wirecast

To put a video on your cell phone, take video
– export to 3G (format for cell phones)
– now just use bluetooth to transfer the file to your phone

Why is H.264 so great?
– compression software does dual pass, when it takes the 2nd pass it puts more bandwidth in those places where there is more motion
– now that you can use Final Cut Pro with HD you can do some amazing quality stuff, then put that stuff on the internet with H.264 with great quality

Thursday night Keith will be going over more on creating QT VR stuff, haven’t announced time or place yet

www.reflecmedia.com has new chromakey method, use a grey screen background
– about $2000 for light system
– used in LOTR